For the Love of Cities—2020 and Beyond

I am known as the “City Love Guy,” and it is my job to be relentlessly positive about cities, towns, villages, burbs, exurbs, etc. So, it is not typical for me to lead with a negative, but here goes. 2020 sucked. Let’s just say it. By any objective measure, it was an awful year: The pandemic, the senseless deaths of George Floyd, Breona Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery (and many others), job loss, economic turmoil, stress, isolation, and political divisions that run so deep they seem to draw blood. When something is awful, human nature wants to move quickly past it and try to forget it. However, I think it does us all a disservice to simply brand 2020 an “awful year” and move away from it as if it were a bad smell.

This past year has been hard—and things will likely get even harder before we find a new equilibrium that feels “normal” again. While it is hard, now is the time to think about what trends and opportunities have come out of 2020 and what lessons we have learned.